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Beware the spawn of Donald Trump: Tony Burman

Donald Trump will likely lose on Nov. 8, but the political earthquake he represents will endure. The crucial question is how?

Ironically, it may not be in the United States, but in Europe — with the threatening resurgence of its extreme-right political parties — where Trump’s aftershocks will be most dramatically felt, even after his electoral defeat.

If Hillary Clinton survives these tense final days and wins the U.S. presidency by a decisive margin, most Americans will want to see the end of Trump. And this will include most Republicans.

To exact their revenge, embittered Republicans will undoubtedly reach to the crude methods of the Russia of old — how ironic is this? — to try to airbrush the disastrous Trump era out of its party’s history. Whether or not they succeed, the probability is that, in the U.S. at least, Trump and what he represents will be a spent political force for the foreseeable future.

But not in Europe. That is what I have come to learn after spending the last week here. Regardless of whether he loses, Trump’s surprising candidacy — cloaked in a racist populism that exploits fear and division — has breathed new life into the many extremist parties in Europe that are seeking to gain power.

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Trump’s likely defeat will be irrelevant. After all, he will still get the support of perhaps 40 per cent of American voters. And let’s remember that populists are often popular only until they actually achieve power. Losing can have its benefits.

The challenge for these once-fringe parties has been to break into the mainstream. Rather than being dismissed as grubby and unsavory, they want to be seen as respectable alternatives to the forces in power. Although the chaotic influx of refugees into Europe has bolstered their popularity, these minority parties are now benefiting from unexpected foreign allies.

Russia’s despotic President Vladimir Putin, an outspoken Trump supporter, is widely believed to be covertly funding many of these parties. And Trump, an ardent admirer of Putin, has pushed racist and anti-immigration positions that are supported by these parties.

Not-so-strange bedfellows, it seems. It is all so cosy.

Of course, Trumpism, such as it is, has not yet won over mainstream public opinion or the political establishment throughout Europe, except among Russians, whose state media lavishes Trump with praise. Opinion polls elsewhere indicate that most Europeans loathe him and would regard his election as a catastrophe.

That view is shared by most European leaders. French President François Hollande has said that Trump “makes you want to throw up.” And German Foreign Secretary Frank-Walter Steinmeier has called Trump’s candidacy “grotesque.”

But not all European leaders share that view, seemingly influenced by the growing popularity of their extremist opposition parties. The president of the Czech Republic and the prime minister of Hungary have both endorsed Trump, while leaders of Slovakia and Poland have supported anti-Muslim views embraced by Trump.

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In these final days of the campaign, we will be hearing a lot about the race tightening, and the so-called “hidden” Trump vote. That stuff keeps the media in business.

But let us not lose sight of the wider picture.

Extremist European party leaders are crackpots in the same sense that Trump is. And that’s not a state secret, shared only by you and me. It’s a view overwhelmingly accepted by both Europeans and Americans alike.

I remember November 2008, when Americans had the opportunity to elect an African-American president for the first time. Incredibly, polls on the eve of that election suggested that Barack Hussein Obama would win.

I was living in the Middle East then, working for Al Jazeera English in Qatar. Few of my colleagues at the time — suspecting that something would intervene — believed that Americans, in the end, would elect Obama. I actually did.

On Thursday, while campaigning for Clinton in Florida, Obama was right when he said, “the presidency shines a light on who we are.”

Americans know that, and I am certain it will be reflected in their decision on Nov. 8. And given their history, I suspect that Europeans also know what is at stake for them in this anxious period ahead.

Tony Burman is former head of Al Jazeera English and CBC News. Reach him @TonyBurman or at tony.burman@gmail.com .

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